Almost two years after a derelict cargo ship with 492 Tamil migrants arrived on the B.C. coast, six of the asylum-seekers remain in the custody of police or border authorities — their cases illustrating the convoluted, rough-and-tumble course refugee claims can sometimes take.

Take the cases of migrants "B001" and "B072." In recent weeks, the Immigration and Refugee Board ordered their release from Canada Border Services Agency custody. The government quickly moved to block their release and get a second opinion from the Federal Court.

On May 3, a federal judge quashed B001's release, calling the IRB's decision "naive and perverse." But on May 10, another judge upheld B072's release, saying that holding someone "with no obvious end in sight" was unacceptable.

Enter the police. On Tuesday, RCMP announced that two men from the MV Sun Sea were now in police custody — each charged with one count of organizing entry into Canada contrary to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

"It's no coincidence that police and immigration officials work hand in hand on making decisions on when to proceed with criminal charges," said Douglas Cannon, a refugee lawyer who has represented several of the Sun Sea migrants.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Duncan Pound said flight risk is a factor that influences the timing of when police move forward with charges.

"The RCMP gathers evidence and works in partnership with Crown Counsel who has the final say on charge approval. Ultimately, charges and charge approval is a matter of the evidence supporting them, rather than the timing of the charges," he said. "Prudent police work does include, however, an awareness of the custody status of suspects on any case."

There has been ongoing debate in Ottawa about how long authorities should be allowed to detain migrants who show up in Canada en masse, as the Sun Sea migrants did.

An anti-smuggling bill introduced by the Harper government originally suggested an automatic one-year detention without review.

However, under criticism, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced this month that the government had revised the bill to say that migrants should be given a detention review within 14 days, followed by another review six months later.

(The current system requires a detention review within 48 hours, then seven days later, then every 30 days after that).

Cannon said the government has no reason to tinker with the system. The fact that Tamils are still in custody almost two years after the Sun Sea's arrival shows that the IRB is willing to detain people as long as it feels it is warranted.

"(The proposed changes) serve to punish people for relying upon human smugglers to access the refugee system when the current system provides substantial power to keep people in detention when justified," he said.

B001 and B072, whose identities are protected under orders of the IRB and the Federal Court, received deportation orders in September and November of last year after IRB adjudicators ruled there were reasonable grounds to believe that they had engaged in people smuggling. In fact, B072 was described as a principal organizer of the operation.

Their removals were suspended, however, after they filed last-ditch applications for pre-removal risk assessments — a process to determine whether someone faces a risk of torture or death if returned to their home country.

While awaiting decisions on those assessments, both migrants remained in detention.

But at separate detention review hearings held in March, B001 and B072 were ordered released with conditions.

In the case of B001, an IRB adjudicator concluded that he no longer posed much of a flight risk and that his detention to date had been "lengthy" already.

The adjudicator also noted that of the hundreds of migrants who had been released from custody in the Sun Sea case and the Ocean Lady case from 2009, she had "yet to hear of any one" who had breached the conditions of their release.

In the case of B072, an IRB adjudicator deemed him to be a moderate to low flight risk and said he was not a threat to public safety.

The adjudicator added: "It is very difficult to estimate how long you may remain in detention."

But in reviewing the order to release B001, Federal Court Judge Judith Snider found that the IRB adjudicator had erred, noting that the migrant's encounters with officials had been "fraught with lies and misrepresentations."

"It is naive and perverse of the Member to now say that, since the Respondent has been found inadmissible, his lies will stop and he will no longer have any motivation to flee," Snider wrote on May 3.

However, Federal Court Judge Robert Barnes came to a different conclusion about the order to release B072.

"To put it simply, as the length of a person's detention increases with no obvious end in sight, so too does the concern for their loss of liberty and the need to consider alternatives," Barnes wrote on May 10 in a decision upholding the release.

Within days of Barnes' decision, the RCMP announced that two new charges had been laid in connection with the Sun Sea investigation and that two men from the vessel had been taken into police custody.

They remain in police custody.

Meanwhile, four men are still in CBSA detention.

The majority of the Sri Lankan Tamils from the Sun Sea have been released and are proceeding with their refugee claims.

According to the most recent data available from the IRB, 19 passengers have received deportation orders on grounds they were members of a terrorist organization, engaged in war crimes or engaged in people smuggling. Six have had their refugee claims accepted, six have had their claims rejected, and one family abandoned their claim.

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